Nanny know-how

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IT’S 40 years since Julie Andrews, umbrella in hand, flew over the rooftops of Edwardian London as P. L. Travers’s magical nanny in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins, bringing order and adventure into the troubled household of 17, Cherry Tree Lane. Now Cameron Mackintosh’s £8 million stage reinterpretation, directed by Richard Eyre, is about to open on Wednesday. Both film and show were a long time coming . . .

THE RIGHTS STUFF Walt Disney had wanted to film Pamela Travers’s stories, written between 1934 and 1944, since the 1940s. Sam Goldwyn and Vincente Minnelli had also shown interest (a US TV version appeared